Fermentation processes are an important component of many industries. For example, fermentation processes are employed to produce a number of different foods and beverages. Further, the ethanol fuel industry is growing at a rapid pace.
Fermentation processes comprise the fermentation by microbial organisms of fermentable compounds into fermentation products, such as ethanol and carbon dioxide. It is therefore desirable to be able to determine the amount of total fermentable compounds.
The methods currently used for measuring total fermentables require a large scale assay which determines the weight loss of a large quantity of plant tissue caused by carbon dioxide evolution during the fermentation. Such a large scale assay requires a large amount of tissue and has a low throughput. It accordingly would be advantageous to be able to use a high throughput assay for measuring total fermentables in a small amount of plant tissue.